User:Jenflind/sandbox

Texas has the second-highest number of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Immigration has always been a big part of Texas. The majority of immigrants in Texas are from Mexico. According to the American Immigration Council, one in six Texas residents is an immigrant and 15 percent of residents who are native-born U.S. citizens have at least one parent who is an immigrant. In the year 2015 over a third of all immigrants in Texas were naturalized U.S. citizens.

Immigration policy determines who may become a new citizen of the United States or enter the country temporarily, as a refugee, or permanent resident. The federal government is responsible for setting and enforcing most immigration policy. States are there to support the policies made by the federal government, but they also can establish their own supplementary laws and policies. Some examples of these could be to determine which public services immigrants can access, establish employee screening requirements, or guide the interaction between related state agencies and their federal counterparts. According to Ballotpedia, some jurisdictions have adopted policies of not cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. These jurisdictions have become known as sanctuary jurisdictions.

Background
The topic of immigration has become increasingly polarized in the United States over the last 20 years, however, it has always been a major issue. Many of the current views of immigration are disconnected from the realities of the statistics of immigration in the United States. The immigration population of the U.S. is growing more slowly now than it has in recent years. New arrivals in the United States are more likely to be from Asia and less likely to be from other world regions, and they are on average more educated than previous generations of migrants to the United States. The Mexican immigrant population in the United States has declined by half a million people since the beginning of the decade. And in 2018, the United States ceded its status as the world’s top country for resettling refugees, surpassed by Canada.

Sanctuary Cities
While an official definition does not exist, a sanctuary city is a jurisdiction within a state that tries to decrease or discourage cooperation with the national government in relation to their enforcement of immigration law. Leaders over these jurisdictions choose to enact policies that decrease this cooperation in an attempt to create an environment where fear of deportation and family break-up can decrease. For example, local law enforcement officers will refuse to keep non-citizen inmates who are about to be released for the additional 48 hours requested by the federal immigration authorities. The additional 48 hours gives authorities time to take them into federal custody.

The Senate Bill 4 Policy banned sanctuary cities in Texas. However, before the policy passed, multiple jurisdictions and cities in Texas were considered to be sanctuary cities.

Asylum Law
A person seeking asylum has to fulfill two requirements. One, the person has to prove that they fear persecution from their native country, and two, that this persecution would come from one of the following reasons: race, religion, nationality, political views, or social groups.

On January 25, 2018 President Trump passed the “Remain in Mexico '' Program, which would send asylum seekers in the United States back to Mexico while they wait for the asylum hearing. 7 ports of entries have implemented this program, 4 of which are in Texas: El Paso-Ciudad Juárez, Brownsville-Matamoros, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo, and Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit halted the program in Arizona and California claiming that the program is violating United States law. However, the law is still in effect in the 4 ports in Texas.

Tent Courts
President Trump initiated tent courts in the border towns of Brownsville and Laredo in September 2019. The tent courts were made in an attempt to process through the huge number of migrants awaiting their cases. The tents provide a shorter commute for the people waiting in Mexico for their trials and allow immigration judges in San Antonio to attend the hearing virtually. People protested against the secrecy of the tents because Homeland security wouldn’t allow anyone from the news or public inside until December 2019, when Homeland Security opened the tents to the public. There were also complaints that people were not receiving due process in the tent courts.

Senate Bill 4
On May 7, 2017 Governor Greg Abbott initiated a new law that affects both illegal immigrants and law enforcement officer. The bill grants the law enforcement officers the ability to ask about the immigration status of someone when they have been arrested and detained. The law also bans sanctuary cities in the state. A law enforcement officer can be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for refusing to help the federal government with immigration enforcement.

Resettlement of Refugees
On January 10, 2020 Governor Greg Abbott declared that Texas would not accept any refugees that year, becoming the first state to do so. This decision came after President Donal Trump gave local governments the ability to veto refugee resettlements in September 2019. On January 15, 2020 a federal judge blocked the executive order, stating that the it is unlawful to give the states that power. The blocking of this executive order means that Texas will continue to accept refugees, unless the Trump administration chooses to appeal the decision, which they have not chosen to do yet.